


a momentary rest

by calerine



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, F/M, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 04:47:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calerine/pseuds/calerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An imagining of Elementary's Reichenbach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a momentary rest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zeugmatic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeugmatic/gifts), [foreignconstellations](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreignconstellations/gifts).



> Inspired by [5 Fantasy Exit Strategies](http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/5-fantasy-exit-strategies/). Except of course in this fic, the steps are linked.
> 
> TW: slight dub-con in part 5. Also hints of self-harm.

(You take the plunge. Empty the syringe into your bloodstream. Laugh darkly at your private little joke. Marcus is the one who finds you again. You did not plan for this. He calls your name, his breath falling, condensing warmly on your face. The world tilts, vertical, and you are so sorry that you didn’t get to say goodbye. He shouts for Joan to call 911 and you try and reach for his fingers around your waist. But you hear her voice. You hear their voices, you hear _please, Sherlock_ and your breath escapes you in a rush.)

1\. Run away to your childhood home in North London again, except this time you’re running for your life. Spend stopovers in Madrid and Moscow reading pulp fiction. Don’t think about what you have left behind. Keep to yourself. Sleep fitfully. Volunteer no information. Everything Mycroft wants to know, he can deduce for himself. Take bright red buses into the city. Hide yourself in under layers of make-up and dresses and shirts so you can watch without being watched. Think about nothing that matters. Wear that green coat that makes you look twenty-two again. Pretend you are. Tell people that you’re studying German and Baroque music. Insist that they are two completely different things. Use a different accent. Flirt back at the girl behind the coffee shop counter because you want to keep yourself on your toes. Apply for a job with a forged resume. Work at an art gallery as the curator’s assistant. Restore Renaissance paintings, but don’t think at all about how you know to clean a Monet with such careful fingers. Listen to the sound of the mansion yawning at night. Wallow in aching emptiness. Do not think about what you’ve lost.

2\. Run away to Vienna. Take a train to Bratislava. Shake off the woman who has been tailing you since Munich. Wander the streets after dark, enter porn shops and ask for whips. Leave without buying anything. Sleep on stained sheets, surround yourself with walls of peeling paint and the sounds of your neighbours crying. ( _Yes, yes, yes!_ ) Do not shave. Do not shake. Ask after an acquaintance with codewords from a long time ago. Stare down the barrell of a gun and then lie in the back alley afterwards. Your neck burns with someone else’s crushing grip. And now wish you lived with a surgeon again, because fixing a dislocated shoulder on your own is suddenly a lonelier affair. Enter phone boxes with their names on your lips and their numbers scribbled between your ribs. Whisper messages into the receiver. Press it so hard into your collarbone that you lose feeling in your shoulder. Do not scream. Instead, weep into borrowed blankets. Taint them with yourself, crumple the terrible paleness between your fingers. In the faint light of streetlamps, you will not hear anything but your ghosts (the plunge of the syringe and the flat tone of your heart monitor echoing deceit).

(2.5. Never go to France. Never visit the Louvre. You are less self-destructive than everyone thinks.)

3\. Run away to China. Run away to Manchukuo, to a country that no longer exists and feel completely at home. Wrap yourself in secondhand coats that you paid a homeless man too much for, bargaining in your staccato Mandarin. Eat roasted chestnuts in a doorway. The shadows remain safe spaces. Hide in plain sight, you are so clearly a foreigner, your skin is darker now but not nearly dark enough. Visit palaces and tombs and close your eyes in the middle of a courtyard and imagine Spring, flowers in bloom, Japanese soldiers storming the gates, the failing glory of it all. Rent a backroom from a family with four sons and three daughters. Eat your meals with them. Work at a bank. During breaks, call in anonymous tips to the local police station and ache for home. Grow your hair out. Hoard post-it notes and leaking markers. Follow the tracks, the clues and spend weeks wondering if you see something that isn’t there. On your seventy-fourth day in the city, buy five grams of ecstasy from a dealer who calls you ‘White Man’. Think of her. Think of him. Stop.

4\. Run away to Australia. Keep to the countryside although all you really want to do is walk through her cities. Learn Aboriginal names, learn the word for water and let it roll off your tongue with reverence. Trek on the red dirt barefooted and accept a tattered backpack from a little girl with a gap between her two front teeth. Your old knapsack is torn and worn out by all these chases, by your back smashing up against brick walls and your windpipe seizing on each breath. You give her your phone in return. Tell her how much the people in your wallpaper mean to you. You have those pictures in your head, your phone has always just been a back-up. Be caught by a woman in Sydney and lose four days worth of memories. Escape with a broken leg and a fractured wrist. Find yourself in someone’s backyard at dawn. Find yourself on a couch at dusk. Groan with your cracked lips. Wake screaming in the middle of the night to a stranger saying _please_ and you say _Sherlock_ as his voice drops off into the darkness.

5\. Run away to Italy. Introduce yourself as Marcus Watson on good days; those who love you still make up the best of you. You can only hope that they still remember. On bad ones, say John Smith with a duck of your head. Make as if you are apologetic for your common name. Hide your thoughts. Hide the fact that all you can think about when you shake an acquaintance’s hand, is going home. Buy cheap shoes, think of a detective who once loved you. Think of the grey suit he favoured in September and the way he gasped when you peeled it from his skin. Subscribe to stereotypes. Work for a smuggling ring. Use the money to rent a piano and irritate your neighbours with three a.m. renditions of Weber. Use the information to break established hierarchies and destroy cartels. Then, turn away after a colleague kisses you. Say “I cannot”, but do not run away this time. Kiss her back. Kiss _him_ back. It doesn’t matter which, now that they are pinning you down and leaving teeth marks in your skin. Fake your death again; it’s fast becoming a habit.

(Go home. Go back to New York City, to a brownstone two streets from Central Park, to your father’s cheapest estate. Knock and receive no answer. Enter to find it devoid of anything but your bees on the roof. Stake out the NYPD for the entire week, and imagine three hundred and sixty-four different ways this could go wrong. On Friday evening, go up to them and say “I’m sorry”. Keep your head low and keep your voice lower. Show your fear. Do not dodge Marcus’ punch. Let him bruise your cheek and make a scathing comment about your trustworthiness. Let Joan hiss, let her shake you. Let them pull you close. Let them hate you for your deceit. Apologise more times than is necessary. Make Joan tea without her asking. Do not steal Marcus’ firearm like you used to. Instead, kiss him. Stay.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> For Sam and Pandora whom I am very very privileged to call my friends. We haven't known each other for very long but thank you for talking me through bad days and offering to be my alibis when I feel driven to murder.


End file.
